Algorithmic conservation in a changing climate

Climate change and the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are simultaneously reshaping environmental conservation. This article reviews the intersection of these two trends. First, we review how AI has become integrated into existing climate knowledge infrastructures and decision-making systems. Second, we review how AI is reshaping decision-making processes in the face of climate change, focusing on the governance of changing biological systems. AI is transforming data collection and classification, conservation decision-making, and rule enforcement. A crucial theme is the changing temporality of environmental governance. We emphasize automated data collection and classification, dynamic optimization and predictive enforcement. Third, we turn to emergent problems in the ethics and politics of algorithmic conservation. AI’s increasingly prevalent role in conservation has the potential to introduce ethical dilemmas, redistribute power among stakeholders, and enable the emergence of new objects of knowledge and political struggles.